What effect does winning a Best of 2015 award have on downloads?
At the end of each year, Apple picks 25 of…
Waiting for review – Those painful moments in the run up to an app launch
You’ve worked hard on your app, you’ve tweaked and re-tweaked the design, tested the different elements, coordinated teams across many time zones, managed different priorities, worked to craft the marketing strategy and you’ve told people:
“The app will be live on the 4th of March”.
You know that the average time it takes for an app to be approved by Apple is around 6 to 7 days. From experience and from checking the latest figures from fellow developers. Therefore, you’ve submitted the app to them in time to accommodate for 7 days, and you’ve set the release date to the 4th inside the dashboard as you know you should.
The first 5 days fly by, you don’t even check your iTunesConnect dashboard.
On the 6th day, you login. It still says “Waiting for review”.
You feel yourself gulp. Doubt creeps in: “Should I have aimed to submit the app to them sooner? Is this not going to be approved on time?”.
No surely not, surely it’ll be approved you tell yourself.
You start checking the dashboard every 30 minutes, to be greeted by the message “Waiting for review”.
You tell yourself you’re being silly, so you leave it.
The next morning you login, still “Waiting for review”.
Tomorrow was supposed to be the day of the launch. You start checking the figures and see that some developers are reporting 5 days, others 12.
Oh no – what now? You resolve to wait, surely in the next few hours it’ll change from “Waiting for review” to “In Review” which will be followed a few short hours later by “Ready for Sale”. But it doesn’t happen.
You’re panicking, how long can I wait? The app should have been available by now in Australia.
You check the figures again and again, refreshing the screen, and it’s driving you insane. You can’t get any other work done, you’re too focused on this. Staring at the screen willing it to change.
It’s too late. Even if switched to “In Review” you’d still not be in time to launch on the 4th of March as promised to the client and your business partner. You feel silly, but you craft an email, apologise, and ask everyone to hold off announcing the app’s availability until the next day.
You pride yourself on good work, and you have to admit you’ve failed.
You fall asleep, wake up the next day and refresh the screen:
“Waiting for review”.
What? Seriously Apple, come on, cut me a break!
You make some breakfast, start planning for the worse if the app isn’t approved and keep checking.
“Waiting for review”
“Waiting for review”
“In Review”
Those magical words appear. You feel like jumping up and down! You proudly announce to everyone that we’re on to launch on the 5th of March.
You feel a weight lifted off your shoulders. A few hours later, you see the next message:
We’re ready to rock!
The next waiting game begins. You wait for the promotions to start, and the figures to come in.
Two lessons learnt:
- Give yourself extra time when you submit an app for review by Apple
- Keeping your eyes on the clock only makes it worse
Haha so true! First app is waiting for review..
So exited!!
Very amusing ! I’m actually living the same insanity right now.
My app just went “In Review” (after 7 days “Waiting for review”) and it’s driving me crazy. As you said, can’t get any other work done, too nervous !…
Oddly, it went “In review” in a very inappropriate time range (around 1.30am Cupertino time)… So I might have to wait a full day before getting news about it.
Thanks for sharing this experience 🙂 (and sorry for my english, I’m french).
It’s the kind of post where you don’t know if to laugh or cry. I’m still in “waiting for review” after 7 days. Thank you for cheering me up.
Nice to hear there was a happy ending 😉
This is hilarious. Very funny post. I’m going through the exact same thing!
Spot on.
For every app, the same thing 🙁
Or when you receive an error status after the long and painful wait…
hahaha. Awesome. I’m currently waiting for review. This post says it all.
I love Apple devices, but their app review process is a joke. You can propagate a new Android release in roughly 90 minutes, but for iOS, as you stated, it takes on the order of a week or longer. Currently “Waiting for Review” 11 days later for my latest release.
Of an app that they ALREADY APPROVED!
The review staff is either understaffed, incompetent, or both.
Haha yes! I know what you mean!
as you said, very painful to get from waiting for review to in …!
Yeah my app is in Waiting For Review state, and I am checking iTunes Connect every 30 minutes in my office!
just what i feel right now “Keeping your eyes on the clock only makes it worse”! ;P
Same scenerio…. waiting…
Can’t focus even on the launch party which is scheduled in next 4 days.
As saying goes’ it’s late..but,not the end.
7 days and still “waiting for review”. Pulling my hair out every hour now!!
hahaha … You give me hope. but I’ve been waiting 7 days :'( i act like a really stupid.
upload date Mar 06, 2015 a:) and now Mar 13, 2015 . i hope it will not take much more.
Thank you for this nice post 🙂
Ok so my app just changed to in reveiw!!! I have waited two weeks for it to change but how much time does it need to appear on the app store
Damn true! I’m going through the exact same thing right now, still “waiting for review”.
Haha Damn true!
same here after 7 day “in review”, how many hours or days for the “ready for sale”?
I’m still in waiting for review after 8 days. :/
My birthday is march 5th so YAAAYY
Same thing except it was rejected because I disabled ads on purpose! Now I got to wait all over again 🙁
If the average review time is 7 days, you don’t promise 7 days. It’s just an average, and what if the app is rejected! There’s just no guarantee from Apple; therefore, it would be irresponsible for YOU to guarantee a specific date yourself unless it is a worst-case date and allows for multiple submissions or you absolutely know your submission will be accepted.
Thanks guys for your msgs. I just started my ‘waiting for review’ yesterday with Apple, and I have checked uncountable times already! I found your msgs when trying to find out how long the wait . Now that I know the situation, I will learn from your experiences and check once a day from now on and concentrate on other platforms and give myself another 10 days!
So true Andreas!! I have submitted my app for review 2 weeks back. First it was a binary rejection and now a metadata rejection. The worst part is for even a minor correction you gotta go back and stand last in the queue..
This is like asking a customer who doesn’t have change at checkout of a supermarket to go back and stay in the que to come back with exact denomination.. Absurd!
Gotta live with it… no choice to swim, but cross the toll-bridge!!!
The wait is killing me! The app that I made isn’t even that complex. Thanks for the narrative.